


Bred for War, Born to Love You

by TaleWeaver



Category: Mythos Academy (Jennifer Estep), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Book/Movie Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:42:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWeaver/pseuds/TaleWeaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(fusion with the Mythos Academy novels) Clint and Natasha are both outsiders at Mythos Academy, even without them both being Champions.  But the bond they forge will defy their differences in age and experience, carrying them both through blood and fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bred for War, Born to Love You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashen_key](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashen_key/gifts).



> TRIGGER WARNING: references to pedophilia and (consensual) underage sex (nothing explicit). 
> 
> SPOILERS: character backgrounds; up to the first chapter of _Crimson Frost_ (Book 4)
> 
> A/N: Yes, in this story Hades is played by Sebastian Stan. No, he’s not actually Bucky; it’s a cross-timelines anthropomorphic kind of thing.
> 
> PROMPT: for the be_compromised promptathon of epicness (2012). The prompt from ashen_key was:
> 
>  
> 
> _Good thing, I know I was built for the war,_
> 
>  
> 
> _I was built to be all yours._

Natalia was born knowing that she belonged to Death.

But she didn’t hear him until the night her parents died, as the house burned. It was His voice in her head, woven from shadow and wind, that woke her up, and told her to escape.

He talked to her often over the years that followed, though only at night. His voice was always made of darkness, and smelt of ashes and snow. She saw him in dreams, a pale man with midnight hair and eyes, and it was as she slumbered that he taught her.

“I am sorry to have to come to you like this,” he apologized to her once, “you deserve a childhood, and to grow and learn in your own time. But I have great need of you, my dear one, and if you do not start learning now, you will not be ready, and you probably will not survive what is to come.”

“I want to live,” Natalia told him, with all the pragmatism of a native Russian. “So I need to learn.”

He smiled at her, a wintry thing, but not without kindness or affection. “Such a clear-sighted child. You may very well turn out even better than I hoped! Your work will be unpleasant at times; it will often be painful and demanding. You will have a long and hard road to travel. But you will not go unrewarded, I promise. What I do not have time to teach you, others will, and you will know the satisfaction of accomplishment, the protection of knowledge, and the security of knowing that you are not only strong but skilled, and your confidence is well-earned. You will not be without love, either, dear one; your fierce little heart will not be empty forever. You will have a mate worthy of all your trust and capable of returning your love measure for measure, even as I found mine.”

As she slept in the tiny room next to Uncle Ivan’s – more a closet, really – she dreamed of her Lord of Darkness and Frost. At his urging, she found and read books about ancient mythology and history, before the birth of Christ, and he told her in her dreams what really happened. How Loki, Norse God of Mischief, had sparked a war that consumed every Pantheon of the Earth. European, Asian, African and even those of the jungles of America – they had all named Champions, who fought in their name against Loki and his allies. How Loki had finally been defeated in single combat by Nike, Goddess of Victory, and had been imprisoned and sealed away.

It wasn’t long until she realised who her beloved teacher must be. 

Not Death, but the King of the Dead.

“Why do you come so often in the winter?” she asked him one night, after their knife-fighting lesson. “Doesn’t your wife miss you?”

She already knew enough of things done in night-darkened bedrooms that it had occurred to her that it could not be a safe or healthy thing to provoke the jealousy of a goddess – especially one who could only share her husband’s bed half the year as it was. After all, she knew the truth of that story, too; Kore had been abducted, true enough, but it had been with her happy co-operation. She had chosen to become Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.

He smiled at her. “My Queen knows the importance of your training. She had her own Champion to train some time ago. Besides, she likes being able to exercise her skills at ruling; she’s not given the chance to do much in the way of useful work in the time she spends with her mother.”

Hades taught her how to become part of the shadows, to conceal herself from his enemies. He taught her how to listen to them, and gain knowledge of all the things done in the dark. How to fight – and how to kill. Most importantly, she learned how to recognise those it was right to use those skills on. 

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

When Clint was ten, he started dreaming of arrows, glinting like sunlight, and fletched with the feathers of hawks. It’s why he went to TrickShot and asked him for lessons. The bow felt **right** in his hands, like nothing else, and the bow and arrows responded to him like a lover. Even as a shadow lurked and grew at the back of his eyes, TrickShot laughed and made jokes about Clint’s ‘god-given talent’.

When he was fifteen – long after Barney left, but not too long after TrickShot left Clint with scars on his body and his heart, and Hawkeye became one of the stars of the circus - a short, dark-haired woman in glasses with the muscles of an acrobat approached him backstage at the circus, and informed that him ‘god-given’ was, in fact, the literal truth.

A circus life may be glamourous and exciting, but it’s also precarious and exhausting, and if what Professor Metis told him about the Reapers is even halfway true, turning down her offer would probably get him killed. 

Not to mention the dreams he’d been having about a golden-haired man who shines so brightly it should be hard to look at him directly, constantly telling him tales of victory in battle. When Clint remained skeptical, he switched to playing a lyre and reciting shitty war-epic poetry in an effort to annoy him into obedience. But the guy had been getting angrier and meaner, and Clint had a suspicion that some kind of force was coming soon. Better to choose your fights. Besides, free board, lodging and education until he’s twenty-one was an opportunity he’d be stupid to turn down.

He found life at the Academy to be really strange – not just because of the classes in weapons that the modern world considered obsolete, or the magic that the older students used as casually as breathing, and that all the myths and legends and ancient nightmares were true, not even the weird gourmet shit the cafeteria served – seriously, Clint had to sneak out of the Academy to get a freaking cheeseburger! It was that all the other students were descended from long bloodlines of heroes, and nearly all of them were filthy rich, the kind of rich that thought nothing of dropping hundreds of dollars a month on illicit booze and getting a new car every year. They all party like there’s no tomorrow, with the security of knowing their parents have a hundred dollar an hour attorney to get them out of trouble. Clint came from a very different kind of life than everyone else – so different it’s almost literally another world – and that made him stand apart.

Even more than his status as a Champion – the Chosen One of Apollo. He didn’t have to be told that he was a gold-circle bullseye for every Reaper out there, and if another war broke out – and between his dreams and the way some of the teachers were acting, he was getting the distinct impression the signs weren’t good – he’ll be right there on the front lines.

Not to mention the looks department – everyone at the Academy who wasn’t him looked like they escaped from a CW show. It’s like Gossip Girl meets Hercules the Legendary Journeys around here. Clint wasn’t all that humble – he knew he had a good body, and in the last year or so he could have had a new girl in his bed at every town the circus stopped at if he wanted. But he didn’t have the kind of perfectly sculpted face and glamorous features that seem to be standard issue at Mythos. He was plain and poor, and that set him apart more than all the extra tutoring he needed to catch up on the schooling he’d missed.

It took him awhile, but he found some guys to hang out with. Most of the Spartans were pretty down-to-earth – probably because most of the others are a little scared of them – and there’s a couple of ninjas who were always willing to talk about archery and hang out at the range. Clint had started to develop quite a taste for sake.

As for girls? Well, he wasn’t exactly pretty, and he didn’t have the cash or time to lavish presents and attention like most of the other guys around here. They’re not all snobs or bitches, of course, but those are the girls that get snapped up early. Either that, or they want far more from a guy than he was willing to give – not sex or anything, but emotionally. He’d been given sniper training in his first year instead of his fifth, and scored better than anyone else ever has, because it suited him. The incredible distance vision – that didn’t come from magic, his bloodline or even his status as a Champion – helped make him the best marksman the Academy’s ever seen. He liked seeing everything from a distance, and the top-secret information he had to keep locked in his heart about his status would always throw up a barrier between him and almost everyone else.

He had never been in love, but he has loved, and Clint was pretty sure that when – if - he fell, he’ll fall completely. With Barney gone, there was no one in the world he’d trust with the chance to do that much damage.

Then in his second year at the Academy, he was asked to mentor a new student – fresh from Russia, wonky English, and only ten years old.

“I know it’s not exactly the best solution,” Professor Metis told him apologetically. “But you’re one of the very few students with a background **anything** like hers.”

Clint looked at the mythology and history profesor skeptically. But then, she knew what **he** was, not only his heritage as part of a Greek hero bloodline but as a Champion. On the other hand, if there was anyone in the world who would have known him, it was Prof Metis. 

“I didn’t think Mythos even took students below fifteen,” he replied.

“We don’t. But Natasha is an exception to so many norms among the heroic bloodlines. It’s too damn dangerous to leave her in foster care.”

Clint grimaced. A hero in foster care? Talk about putting out an ‘all you can eat’ sign for the Reapers.

“Not to mention her heritage.”

“She’s another Greek?”

Metis shook her head. “Spartan. Females are actually quite rare among them – daughters usually take after the mother’s bloodline - which makes her especially valuable. More to the point, the Spartan magic is already fully active in her – and she’s had to use it.”

Clint couldn’t help his jaw from dropping at that one. Every heroic bloodline had it’s own inborn magical talents – he was only sixteen, and his hadn’t quickened yet. For the Greeks, Romans, Amazons, Vikings, and Valkyries it tended to change from person to person. But every Spartan was born with the instinctive ability to pick up any object, and automatically know the most effective way to use it to kill. But a ten year old not only having it – but having to use it?

“How? Why?” he asked.

Prof Metis sighed. “Natasha was born in Russia; her parents died when she was five in a house fire, and her uncle took her in. He died last year, and he was apparently part of a pretty shady crowd. Natasha was stolen off the streets by a human trafficking ring.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Clint muttered. It said a lot that Prof Metis didn’t reprimand him for his language.

“Natasha was part of a group of very pretty children that were closely guarded and tended to, in order to increase their... price,” she grimaced in disgust. “So at least there’s no history of abuse to deal with. But the government agent who contacted the Academy and told us about Natasha was quite clear that she’d used her ability in self-defense on at least two occasions.”

“Wait, government agent? Not Council?” Clint asked. “I thought the war between heroes and reapers was kept strictly away from anyone official.”

“Oh, it is. But there are the occasional heroes who go into military or government service, and distant descendants who know about us but don’t have enough power in the blood to come here.”

Clint frowned. “What exactly is it that you want me to do?”

Prof Metis leaned back in her chair, letting out a world-weary sigh. “Mostly, just be her friend. Show her around the campus, warn her about who it’s a bad idea to cross. Answer her questions honestly. I’ve been told she’s almost frighteningly self-possessed and mature for her age, so I doubt you’ll be doing much babysitting. We can’t really send her to one of the public schools, so we’ll be working out a kind of home-schooling schedule for her. Once we can assess her skills and control levels, we’ll try and get her into some kind of club or group in town, so she can make friends her own age.”

Clint bit his lip. This was way out of his league... but hell, this girl deserved all the help she could get. Also, it was true that there were very few students at Mythos who knew anything about what it was like to be poor and helpless.

Clint nodded firmly. “I’ll do it.”

Deep in the shadows of the office, a tall, pale man with night-dark hair smiled, lightening eyes full of secrets that only the dead knew.

“Done!” he whispered.

Clint shivered, without knowing why.


End file.
